Phabricator is an open source application that helps software companies to create/build better software, which is built using PHP language and available under Apache 2.0 open source license for Linux, MacOSX and can be run in any platform, it can even run in windows but it is totally based on Linux support. Phabricator has been used by Facebook before. The first version of phabricator was built by facebook with lots of features such as reviewing and auditing codes, tracking bugs etc.

Install Phabricator in CentOS and Ubuntu

We can use phabricator as a repository same as git and svn. There are several privacy settings available to secure the code among particular development teams. We can review the code of coworkers before finalizing the code.

I hope everyone is aware about git, if not please have a quick look at the GIT article below, that explain how to use it.

Same like git, phabricator also has lots of features and used by most of the popular companies like Facebook, Dropbox, Groupon to develop there web applications.

Requirements

Phabricator can run in a normal computer, with following required packages. We don’t need specification with high resources.

Apache2.2.7 or higher

MySQL and PHP 5.2 or higher

Git and some of the php extensions.

NOTE: Phabricator can only be installed on an entire domain (tecmint.com) or on an sub domain (phabricator.tecmint.com). You cannot install it to a specific path on any existing domain, say “tecmint.com/phabricator”.

Step 1: Installing Required Components

There are scripts available for setting-up in Ubuntu and Redhat based Linux, choose this option if you are not familiar with Linux.

Next, run the storage upgrade script to load database schema into it. While processing, it will prompt you to press ‘y‘ to continue, this will take little time to complete the setup for setting-up data schema.

# ./bin/storage upgrade --user root --password mjackson

Configure MySQL

Once, scheme added to mysql, restart the service to take new settings.

# service mysql restart
$ sudo service mysql restart

Step 5: Configuring Phabricator Web UI

Now you can access the web UI at the following locations, but we need to create an admin login account.

http://phab.tecmintlocal.com/
OR
http://ipaddress

Phabricator Admin Account

If the above admin setup page is not displayed we need to create admin login manually from the terminal. This step only required, if incase we get the error cause admin account was not defined.

# ./bin/accountadmin

Once admin account created, you can login into admin section using same credentials. After login you can see some setup issue in the top left corner, that needs to be resolved before start using it.

Here are some of the steps to get fix, each and every issues can be resolved very easily as they have pointed how to resolve it.

Phabricator Setup Issues

Total, there are 10 setup issue mentioned as shown in the image below.

Open Phabricator Issues

Here, I can’t show how to resolve each issue, but will try to show how to resolve one of the issue as mentioned in the error page. Let’s take first issue, MYSQL STRICT_ALL_TABLES Mode Not Set, clicking on the link will get the instructions on how to solve the issue.

So, let’s follow those instructions as described in the page. Open and edit the mysql configuration file.

# /etc/my.cnf [On RedHat]
# sudo vim /etc/mysql/my.conf [On Ubuntu]

Next, append the code under the mysqld section of conf file, what we get from while clicked on “MYSQL STRICT_ALL_TABLES Mode Not Set“.

sql_mode = STRICT_ALL_TABLES
ft_min_word_len = 3

After resolving each errors, you must restart the MySQL and Apache service to reflect new changes.

After, solving all issues, you can login into the panel again and check for the status, you will see “Ready to Use” message.

Phabricator Login

Check Phabricator Issues

Step 6: Browsing Phabricator Features

You can see some of the user available features as shown in the pictures below.

Add Authenticate Provider

Phabricator Configuration

Core Applications

Utilities

Administration

For Creating a normal user account, click on top-left corner icon then Scroll down the page, then click on “People“. Now to create a new user we have to Click on “Create New User“.

Step 7: Recover Phabricator Admin Password

If incase, you forget your admin password and you want to recover it, just follow the below command.

# ./bin/auth recover tecmint

Recover Admin Password

Next, copy the given access code and access the URL to recover, as shown in the images below.

Authentication Failure

Phabricator Account Recovery

That’s all for now, we’ve successfully installed and configured “Phabricator“an open source project management tool without any glitches. I hope you too setup with any errors, if any let me know via comments, I would love to help you out.

There is one point I’d like to mention. The first sentence is “Phabricator is an open source Project Management tool, which is built using PHP language and available under Apache 2.0 open source license… “, which made me think that the application is a direct Project Server / Project Manager competitor. And frankly I have read your post with this understanding (or assumption if you will). However, looking at the application’s web site, it is explicitly stated that “Phabricator is a collection of open source web applications that help software companies build better software.”

I think it can be a good idea to review the opening sentence to precisely reflect what the application is all about.

This post contains a lot of security concerns that are completely glossed over.
Take the time to learn how to set up the system securely before allowing any external access to this application if it was installed following this guide.